


That Which Consumes

by tristesses



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Body Horror, M/M, Mind Control, Parasites, Space Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-15 15:43:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16066235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tristesses/pseuds/tristesses
Summary: "Sir, we're picking up a signal from the unknown vessel," the comms officer called out."Patch it through," Thrawn ordered.It was audio-only, and the frequency on which it was carried was staticky and thin. Still, the words echoing through the bridge were clear enough.So were the screams.





	That Which Consumes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chrysaora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrysaora/gifts).



The derelict vessel was a long sliver of a ship in empty space, slowly tumbling bow over stern in the black. It was, Eli knew, a journey that would not stop for hundreds of years; it was lightyears away from any gravitational mass or even an asteroid field that would stop its motion. This was dead space, after all; the _Chimaera_ had only stopped here because they'd sensed the ship on scans.

That just made the derelict's steady progression into the darkness all the more eerie.

Eli slid a sideways glance towards Thrawn. The commodore was watching not the ship on the viewscreen, but the sensor scans displayed on the aft holopod. His hands were clasped behind his back, his eyes narrowed and his head slightly tilted. Eli's gaze traveled along the smooth line of his neck and cheekbones almost absently—he was used by now to the pang that pulsed through him whenever he looked at Thrawn—and drifted to the hologram.

He took in the information displayed there: the structure of the ship outlined in blue, ovoid with bulges like veins running what seemed to be bow to stern. Weapons blisters? Seemed like a lot for a ship no bigger than an escort frigate. Maybe they were the structural supports for the ship's shield generators, although if they were, they were nonfunctional; the ship was completely unshielded. No bright red dots indicating life signs aboard, either. Despite the lack of shields, the ship seemed in perfect shape; no signs of hull breaches or even scorching from laser fire. But the lack of crew…it might have been out here a long, long time. Eli surpressed a shiver. Stranded in the black was every spacer's nightmare.

There were odd pink strands running through the blue of the ship's hull, too. Eli had never seen that color on an external sensor scan before.

"Interesting," he murmured, stepping closer to Thrawn's side. "What's the pink indicate?"

"Organic matter," Thrawn said. "It is usually present on scans of ships containing plant life, or other nonsentient organics. Curious indeed to see it externally."

"Externally? So it's part of the hull?" Eli asked doubtfully, an unlikely image of space mollusks flashing through his mind. Cousins of the purrgil, maybe. "Are we sure it's not inside the ship?"

"Quite sure," Thrawn said. "In fact, our scans can't penetrate the hull at all."

Eli frowned, his mind racing through the sensor-blocking materials he was familiar with. Not many were mined or created in quantities great enough to build an entire ship from them. The purchases of such huge amounts of those materials would definitely have caught Eli's eye, and he spent a _lot_ of time watching the rise and fall of the rare metals market.

He told Thrawn as much, and added, "It must be the organic matter, then," somewhat doubtfully. He still wasn't sure about how accurate those scans were.

"Yes, it must," Thrawn agreed. "Although _how_ remains in question."

"Sir, we're picking up a signal from the unknown vessel," the comms officer—a new transfer, Eli remembered, Lieutenant Lio—called out.

"Patch it through," Thrawn ordered.

It was audio-only, and the frequency on which it was carried was staticky and thin. Still, the words echoing through the bridge were clear enough.

So were the screams.

"This is the trading vessel _Betha's Song_ ," a shaky female voice was saying in accented Basic as chaos unleashed in the background. Eli jolted at a particularly piercing shriek and shot a glance at Thrawn, whose glowing red eyes had narrowed. "Last known position along the Twilight Run between Zeth and Monsula—we were pulled out of hyperspace by a gravitational anomaly—"

Incoherent screams growing louder—drawing closer, Eli thought—then the sizzle of blaster fire, the sound of weeping.

"I'm sorry," the woman was saying, her voice blurry and far away from the mic, "I'm so sorry, I have to—"

Then she was back at the comms station.

"There's something on board," she said, her voice higher-pitched than before. "Something our scans have never seen before, and it's—" Her voice caught. "The crew is dead. Mostly dead. Oh, stars, I _hope_ they're dead."

A crash and an inhuman howling noise in the distance. The woman swore viciously.

"My name is Shandi Maver," she said, more quickly than before. "I'm Shandi Maver. I think it's too late for help. Please don't come aboard. Please remember me."

Her voice fell silent. There was a terrible squelching sound that made Eli wince, then a wet slapping noise, as if something fleshy had hit the comms station. A few more seconds of noise, then the transmit button was hit and the transmission cut off.

The bridge was dead silent. Eli realized he'd forgotten to breathe, and took a great gulp of air. He was no stranger to hearing people die, but this was more gruesome than usual.

He looked at Thrawn, who had remained motionless throughout the transmission.

"It repeats, sir," Lio said, her voice cracking the silence. "Should I…"

"That will be unnecessary, Lieutenant," Thrawn said. His voice was calm and controlled. "Date of the transmission?"

"Three AFE," she said promptly. Eli's skin prickled.

Eleven years ago.

"I see," Thrawn said, and then projected his voice slightly to all the bridge officers. "Given the time elapsed since the transmission and the lack of life signs onboard, I believe any threat has passed. Continue monitoring the ship, and have the information sent to Engineering for analysis; I want to know what is blocking our scans from penetrating the hull."

The entire bridge seemed to exhale with relief at his words.

"I will return in a moment," Thrawn said to Eli in a low voice. Eli nodded—Thrawn was probably off to report this to High Command. It was unusual enough to merit their attention, that was for sure.

The bridge crew seemed to have drawn the same conclusion from his absence, or maybe not noticed it at all—Thrawn had left _very_ quietly—and they were beginning to break free of the grip of fear as the normal buzz of activity resumed.

Well, good for the bridge crew; Eli was still troubled. He flicked through the scans and studied them hard. There was an obvious question to be asked, one that Eli couldn't ignore.

He waited, gnawing on his lower lip, for Thrawn to return.

When he did, his face was a grim mask—the expression he wore when he received orders he really didn't agree with. As he stepped onto the bridge, in front of his crew, it melted into the neutral, unflappable expression he usually had when it was not safe to show his feelings.

Which was basically always. He showed his true feelings to Eli alone. Eli might be happier about that if the situation weren't so dire.

"Lieutenant Commander," Thrawn said, "with me."

Eli gladly followed him off the bridge.

"Sir," Eli said the instant they were alone, "there might not be life signs, but that organic matter is definitely not normal. And what gravitational anomaly pulled them from hyperspace? There aren't any planetary masses around here."

"Indeed," Thrawn mused. "It is a puzzle. One which I intend to solve."

His voice was grimly determined. Eli frowned at him.

"Sir, we have our orders," he reminded Thrawn, though his protests were a little lackluster. He didn't want to abandon this wreck; he wanted to know what happened. "Proceed directly from Sorusar system to Coruscant—we can send a scout back to take a look at the ship."

"We have new orders," Thrawn said. " _Betha's Song_ contains a shipment of precious material—the details of which," he added with a clear note of frustration in his voice, "are unknown to me. We have been given the task of reconnaisance and rescue of the material, as soon as is possible.

Therefore, Commander Vanto, we are not going to send a scout ship to examine the derelict. We will do that ourselves."

 _That_ brought Eli up short.

"Wait a second," he said. "Do you mean examine as in _board the ship?"_

"Yes," Thrawn said mildly. He caught the expression on Eli's face and added, "Wearing full biohaz gear."

"What material could be worth that?"

Thrawn's face stilled. He gave Eli a piercing look.

"We have our orders," Eli muttered balefully. The absolute last thing he wanted to do was board that ship.

Although he _was_ curious about what material it might be carrying.

"We'll be heavily armed, hopefully," Eli said with a sigh.

"Naturally," Thrawn said. "I want you to put together a boarding party of six volunteer technicians—include four of Commander Ayers' stormtroopers—for a total of ten. I will join them."

"Will you now," Eli said dryly. As if he wouldn't.

"A commander does not send his warriors into danger he would not face himself," Thrawn said, and something about the seriousness of his tone made the remark less pithy and more grave. "Remember that."

* * *

The ten volunteers were ready within two hours. Most of those two hours were spent stuffing themselves into the biohaz gear, which, Eli had forgotten, was deceptively sleek for how difficult it was to put on. The puncture-resistant suits fit close to the body, which was an improvement over the older, clunkier designs, but the helmets with their limited range of visibility worried Eli. What if someone—or some _thing_ —snuck up on them? The HUDs on these things weren't great. They would all be vulnerable.

Eli latched his helmet and shrugged mentally. Vulnerable, sure, but the _Chimaera_ had the best crew in the navy. They would be fine.

Probably.

The whole group assembled in the landing bay, where the pit crew had prepared an armored Gamma shuttle for them. Bigger than they needed, but with enough firepower to crush any starfighters launched from the derelict ship. Not that Eli thought there was much chance of that. Better to play it safe anyway.

Thrawn was waiting for them, dressed in the bright orange biohaz gear and carrying his helmet on his hip. He surveyed the group briefly before turning his eyes to Eli.

"I requested ten," he said mildly. "I see eleven."

"Twelve, including you, sir," Eli said, just as mildly. "Eleven's an unlucky number in my part of Wild Space."

One of the pit crew coughed a laugh at that. Eli ignored it.

"Very well," Thrawn said after a moment. Eli hoped he wasn't imagining the note of relief in his voice. "Twelve it shall be." He fitted the helmet on his head and it latched with a click. "The warrior's path lies before us. Let us follow its guidance."

* * *

There was an external hatch on the derelict vessel, toward what Eli thought was the bow of the ship, and to this they attached the boarding chute. The hatch opened cleanly with a whoosh of air as the compartment depressurized, then came the familiar click as the chute locked into place and reversed the flow of air until it stabilized. The twelve of them gathered in front of the chute, falling naturally into groups: the four stormtroopers together, the six techs in a tense cluster, and Eli and Thrawn, standing slightly apart from the rest of them.

"We are ready to proceed," Thrawn said over the helmets' com system, and the quiet chatter from the techs stopped.

"TK-9557 and and TK-8233, take point," Thrawn ordered. The two stormtroopers immediately stepped forward, weapons raised. "TK-9350 and TK-8030, cover our rear."

The techs he placed in a ranging line between the two pairs of stormtroopers, then he took his position centered behind the two stormtroopers at the front. Right where he too could provide covering fire for the techs, Eli noted; he was far enough away from the stormtroopers for his blaster range to cover their flank. Eli took up his place at Thrawn's side, prepared to cover the right flank just as Thrawn was covering the left.

He glanced at Thrawn and surprised a small smile on his face. His eyes were on Eli, his expression, as always, difficult to read. Pleased, that was for sure. Warmth rose in Eli's chest until he remembered the screams on Shandi Maver's transmission. _That_ was a mood-killer. He set his jaw and nodded at Thrawn.

Thrawn nodded back, and switched his helmet's comlink frequency to broadcast to the ship as well.

"Captain Faro," he said. "We are entering the boarding chute now. I will remain on this frequency until the transmission is blocked."

 _Until_ , not _unless_. Eli glanced around; no one else seemed to have caught that, except maybe Faro.

"Yes, sir," she said. It was obvious to Eli she was putting on a brave face for the crew; she and Thrawn had nearly argued about him going on this mission. _It's not a commodore's job to lead a boarding party_ , she'd snapped, then clamped her mouth shut and struggled to maintain her composure.

Eli nearly smiled at the memory of Thrawn's raised eyebrow and the slight quirk of his lips as he'd listened. But there was a time and a place for smiling. This wasn't it.

"Proceed," Thrawn instructed 9557 and 8233, and Eli inhaled, then exhaled, steadying his mind and letting tension fill his limbs. He wasn't exactly new to combat, but the jitters got him every time. He'd learned to embrace them, _like_ them, even. They kept him alert. So he liked to think.

The party went through the boarding chute in procession. Eli kept his hand on his blaster, and Thrawn did too.

The compartment beyond the hatch was clearly just a maintenance tunnel, unremarkable in every way. Eli scanned the tunnel, the beam from his glow rod criss-crossing with the other lights in the party.

"Atmospheric pressure nominal, Commodore," one of the techs announced. She checked her scanner. "And breathable. No signs of any pathogens or dangerous gases."

"Noted," Thrawn said. "Do not remove your helmets."

A different tech dropped his hands from his helmet latch guiltily.

Wait, there _was_ something, Eli noticed. A door, cleverly seamed to look like part of the bulkhead, about twenty meters in.

"Sir," he said, nudging Thrawn, and gestured. Thrawn glanced down the hallway.

"Yes, I see it," he said. "Captain Faro, do you copy?"

"Not so loud and clear," Faro said. The signal was weak and choppy. "But I copy."

"Good," Thrawn said. "Let us continue."

* * *

Past the door, everything changed.

It was an intangible change, though, less of a concrete thing than a shift in Eli's perceptions—he sensed it in the air, some animal instinct deep within him rising up in fear. Pitch-black in here, just like in the maintenance tunnel—they had life support and grav generators, but no lights, apparently—but the air _felt_ thicker, as if his movements were made in higher gravity than was registered on the techs' scanners. The stormtroopers had propped the door open, and the clean air from the tunnel slashed through the miasma within the corridor. Eli wanted to go back. He didn't, of course.

"Technician Bartel, your readings," Thrawn said coolly. If he felt the same tension Eli did, he gave no sign of it.

"Same as the tunnel, sir," Bartel said after consulting his scanner. "But I'm picking up something else—organic matter on the bulkheads."

Immediately, everyone's heads swung up to look at the walls, all their glow rods illuminating a wide stretch of bulkhead.

Nothing.

Eli squinted. Maybe not nothing, after all.

"Wait a second," he said, and stepped forward. Thrawn made an aborted jerking motion; Eli shot him a quick glance but didn't stop.

The floor to the sides of the corridor was sticky, sucking at his boots, as if coated with a thick layer of wet mud. Eli glanced down and saw a viscous black liquid, unidentifiable by sight. He jerked his eyes away and focused on the bulkhead, and on the—object? growth? _something_ he saw there: thin, translucent raised tendrils, running like veins at random intervals across the wall.

"There's something here," he said, and Thrawn stepped forward to examine it too. He cocked his head to the side, his red eyes glowing in the dark. Once, Eli had found that eerie. Now he just found it calming.

"Bartel, what do you read?" Thrawn asked, and the tech scurried to his side.

"Not sure, sir," he said, and flipped the scalpel tool out of the scanner with a _snick_. "I can tell you in just a minute, though."

"Hold," Thrawn ordered, and Bartel froze with the scalpel extended towards the tendrils—Eli really couldn't help but think of them as _veins_ , although he couldn't quite place why. "No samples yet, Technician."

"Sir," Bartel asked, bewildered, "how will we find out what it is?"

Thrawn's eyes flicked to Eli briefly, then back to Bartel.

"Through further, non-invasive examination," he said. "Come."

He gestured them onwards.

They got about two meters away from the door before it slammed shut, the crash echoing down the corridor. Eli's blaster was in his hand instantaneously. One of the techs let out a small yelp; the stormtroopers swung their blasters around to focus on the door.

"Eyes forward," Thrawn snapped, but he had drawn his blaster too. "Vanto, with me."

Eli joined him at the door. Thrawn was running his gloved fingers along the bulkhead, searching for the seams.

"Can you find the control panel?" Thrawn asked him quietly, but Eli was already looking.

"Nothing here, sir," he responded, just as quietly. "Could we pry it open?"

"Observe." Thrawn stepped back and widened the beam on the glow rod to encompass the entire door.

Or what had been the door. Eli saw no door there anymore, just a seamless wall with more veins— _tendrils_ , Eli corrected himself—creeping across it.

"Maybe we got turned around," he suggested. "The door could be meters away."

Thrawn gave him a dry look, clearly unimpressed with that theory. Eli wasn't very impressed with it either. He knew they weren't missing the door; it had been _right here_ , and now it—wasn't.

Thrawn touched his comlink. "Captain Faro?"

Not even static greeted him.

The silence expanded until it choked the room.

"We will continue," Thrawn said calmly. A lot more calmly than Eli was feeling, to be honest; where in seven hells had that door gone? "If life support and gravity are functioning, the rest of the ship's systems may do so as well. We will make for the bridge and proceed from there."

* * *

Time and distance seemed to stretch as they continued on, Eli's legs burning as though he'd walked kilometers, though the chrono's built-in podometer had tracked them moving a scarce fifty meters. The derelict itself couldn't be more than 150 long, seventy-five wide, thirty deep. It wasn't a large ship. There was no way to get lost in it.

But they hadn't found the bridge, either.

They saw the first corpse on the second level, after clambering down through a maintenance tube, clumsy in their stiff biohaz suits. It was so deformed Eli didn't recognize it as a body, at first: the bones of the face crushed in, its limbs separated from the body, its ribcage ripped open as if to expose the heart to the world. It was plastered to the bulkhead by the tendrils, mummified, like all of its fluids had been sucked dry.

On the part of its face that was still recognizable as a face, it wore a beatific smile.

"Technician Bartel," Thrawn said calmly while one of the techs retched. "A sample of the remains, if you please."

Bartel hesitated a bare second before stepping up to the corpse and triggering the scalpel on his scanner. He dug into the corpse—

Something screamed in the distance.

They all jumped, even Eli. Not Thrawn, who had instead turned his head in the direction of the scream, a frown creasing his brow.

"I thought you said no one could be alive after so long, sir," one of the techs said in a high and panicky voice.

"That remains true," Thrawn said. "I do not believe that cry was human."

That made it worse, in a way, because if it wasn't human, what was on board mimicking human screams? Eli clenched his teeth.

Thrawn seemed oblivious to their fear, turning back to Bartel and saying, "What are the results, Technician?"

Bartel squinted at his scanner.

"Human," he reported. "No signs of foreign DNA or DNA unspooling. But sir—I got a piece of the…of the thing holding him to the wall. I'm sorry, I know you didn't want me to—"

"It is done," Thrawn said. "Save your apologies. What does the scanner say?"

"It's fungal," Bartel said. "At least, that's what the cell structure looks like. But it doesn't match with anything in our database."

"Fungal," Thrawn repeated.

He stood motionless, eyes heavy-lidded in thought, for long enough that Eli stepped forward and ventured, "Sir?"

"Lieutenant Commander." Thrawn opened his eyes fully and met Eli's gaze. Eli examined him, trying to figure out what was going on in that brain of his, with no luck. He'd gotten pretty good at guessing Thrawn's tactical and strategic moves—nothing like the man himself, but he wasn't bad—but this wasn't an ordinary situation. Eli had no idea how _he'd_ handle it. Retreat, probably, but they hadn't found any other airlocks, no other escape hatches, nothing except more doors leading deeper into the bowels of the ship.

Thrawn addressed the group.

"I realize this mission is disturbing to some of you," he said, projecting calmness. "However, you are all trained according to Imperial standards, and are more than capable of completing it. We will continue to the bridge." He pointed towards the scream. "Which is located in that direction."

Someone inhaled sharply but said nothing.

"Once there," Thrawn continued, "we will establish contact with the _Chimaera_ and request an extraction. A small team will remain behind to investigate the cargo bay for the items we are here to retrieve. Do you understand?"

A chorus of "aye, sir," came from the assembled party. Thrawn nodded.

"Let us go," he said, and moved to the front of the group again. Eli fell in by his side and adjusted his comlink to a private frequency.

"Sir," he said, once Thrawn had done the same, "are you sure the bridge is in this direction? It's just, the scream…"

"I am positive," Thrawn said. "Whatever is on this ship will have chosen the area with the highest concentration of life forms to inhabit. That would be the bridge."

"You know what this is," Eli accused, the pieces suddenly clicking into place. Thrawn's calmness, his certainty, his lack of fear. "You've known all along."

"I have a theory," Thrawn said. "Tell me, Commander. Have you heard of the _ras'can'tat?_ "

"The—no, I haven't." It was Cheunh, Eli knew, but not a word Thrawn had taught him. He puzzled over the root word for a moment. "The something that…eats?"

"That which consumes is the closest translation," Thrawn said. "A Chiss myth. I had wondered if it made it to your part of Wild Space."

"No," Eli said. "What is it?"

Thrawn was silent for a moment.

"In our earliest days of space travel," he began, and Eli immediately recognized the cadence of a story, "we were unsuccessful in expanding beyond the borders of our star system. We had pilots who could navigate the shifting hyperlanes of the Unknown Regions, but fully half the ships we would send into the black would not return. Some were found, later. The myths do not explain how. But once onboard, the Chiss spacers would discover a ship overtaken by a creature we could not defeat. It spread throughout the ships like a disease, and it consumed. The myths said it would enter the body of a Chiss and slowly bloom from inside him, until he burst open like a seed pod and spread the disease further. As more became infected, a madness would set in; hallucinations, first, violent ones, then the crew would turn on each other, believing them to be enemies. They tore themselves to pieces and the _ras'can'tat_ would take over the ship and feast on their corpses."

Eli reminded himself to breathe.

"It cannot be true, of course," Thrawn said, softly, almost as if speaking to himself. "Not entirely."

"Why not?" Eli asked. He swung his glow rod to illuminate the tendrils on the walls, which were growing thicker the closer they got to the bridge. "Sure sounds right to me."

"Myths grow in the telling," Thrawn said. "Seeds of truth may be at their heart, but they are exaggerated."

"Maybe not this one," Eli muttered.

"And," Thrawn added, "we are in the wrong part of space. The Chiss never ventured into that region of the galaxy."

These were weak excuses, not the sort of reasoning Eli would expect from Thrawn. He gave his commander a hard look. Thrawn met his eyes, his face a mask.

He _was_ afraid, Eli realized. And that, more than anything they'd encountered thus far, made Eli fear.

"How did the Chiss end up defeating the _ras'can'tat?_ " Eli asked, licking his lips.

"We didn't," Thrawn said flatly. "We forbade that sector of space from further exploration and turned our gaze to other sectors."

Then, almost gently, he added, "But there is always something to be done about any given problem. We merely need to find the solution."

* * *

They lost their first man without a sound, without a trace, and if it hadn't been for Thrawn, Eli didn't know how much longer they would have gone with one of their number missing.

Thrawn had stopped suddenly, held up his fist in the signal for _halt_. He swung around and his eyes swept over their party, counting; then his lips thinned behind the transparent plastisteel helmet.

"Eleven," he said, and Eli tensed. "I heard the footsteps of eleven. Where is 8030?"

He was gone.

"TK-9350," Thrawn addressed the remaining stormtrooper at the rear, his eyes narrowing, "can you explain what happened to your comrade?"

A pause, longer than it should have been. Then his voice crackling through his helmet: "No."

Not _no, sir_. Eli frowned. Thrawn drew his blaster.

"Sir!" Eli cried out as the techs recoiled, their ranks splitting down the middle as if cut by a razor, cowering to the sides of the corridor, away from the glowing nose of Thrawn's blaster.

"Silence," Thrawn snapped, and Eli clamped his mouth shut. Surely, after everything they'd been through, Thrawn wasn't going to lose his mind _here_ —?

Of course not. He had a plan. Eli kept his hand on his blaster, eyes on the stormtrooper, but watching for any movement from Thrawn out of the corner of his eye.

"TK-9350," Thrawn said, his voice as full of menace as Eli had ever heard it. "Remove your helmet."

What?

There was another long pause, where the only sound was the raspy breathing of the techs over the comlinks. Then the stormtrooper dropped his blaster, carelessly, as if it were a piece of scrap metal and not a valuable weapon. It clanged on the ground, the sound echoing through the corridor—echoing more than it should in such a small space—and Eli flinched.

His helmet followed. Beneath it was a man, just an ordinary man. But his lips were smacking wordlessly and a thin river of blood ran from the corners of his lips, dripping onto the floor. And his eyes—Eli leaned forward for a better look. 9350's eyes were clouded over white, so opaque Eli couldn't see where he was looking.

It was a matter of seconds, less than that, before the stormtrooper charged Thrawn.

Blaster fire scorched him from all sides, catching him square in the torso: fire from not only Eli and Thrawn, but the other stormtroopers and four of the techs with the presence of mind to draw. 9350 wavered, then collapsed.

Eli went to the body while Thrawn spoke sharply to the techs, reminding them of their duty to the Empire and of their training; it was disgraceful that so few of them were prepared to fire their weapons. Eli agreed, but he had other things on his mind.

He crouched beside the body. It was a charred, raw mess from the chest down to the knees; those blasters had been set to kill. This close, Eli could see something else: the faint trace of bulges under the skin of the face, something that could almost be mistaken for veins if Eli wasn't familiar with the human circulatory system. No veins ran in this kind of pattern. Eli gritted his teeth and reached out with his clumsy gloved hands, prodding at the face.

"Vanto—" Thrawn said warningly, coming to his side.

The veinlike structure felt tough and stringy to the touch, like tendons. Eli knew what it was, but didn't want to admit it, the looming specter of a thing more dangerous than they could handle.

Eli pried open one of the half-closed eyes and saw what had caused that white hue: a network of tendrils clouding the iris, choking the blackness of the pupil. He pressed on the eyelid to see if he could trigger a reaction from the tendrils, and a puff of white powder came from the eye. It settled on Eli's helmet and he scrubbed it off quickly, as if it could have made it through the plasteel.

"Here," Thrawn said quietly, and Eli looked up to find him crouched at the feet of the body. "The organism found an opening in his armor at the knee. If you look, you can see the blood where it entered his body."

"The _ras'can'tat_ ," Eli said.

"Yes," Thrawn said. "I believe so."

"We've got to get to the bridge," Eli said. "We've got to get out of here."

"We are close," Thrawn said. "And we are protected by the biohaz suits. While they are secure, the _ras'can'tat_ cannot affect us."

He sounded awfully sure of that.

* * *

The door seemed to come out of nowhere, a hatchway half-open in the gloom. Tendrils drooped from the frame and crawled across the door, green as if indicating status nominal, and pulsing; they were getting closer to the—head? body? brain?—of the _ras'can'tat_.

"Inviting," Eli muttered to Thrawn, looking distrustfully at the hatchway. Very convenient the door had been left open, even though they'd had to blast their way through every other door on the way here.

"Indeed," Thrawn murmured back. He glanced at Eli. "What are your thoughts, Commander?"

"That this has all been a little too easy," Eli said. They were on the private frequency; there was no need to whisper. He did anyway. "All that chaos on the transmission and we find, what, one body? Two of us missing but nothing to fight? And now, this door is open? It feels like we're walking into a trap, sir."

"Agreed," Thrawn said. "However, at times walking into a trap will reveal much about those who set it. It is a risk that must be taken."

Eli flicked a glance behind him at the frightened techs and stoic stormtroopers. "Is it?"

Thrawn followed his gaze. His expression did not change.

"Collateral damage may sometimes be necessary if one is to succeed," he said evenly.

Eli bit his lip. Thrawn was right, he knew, but that didn't make him feel much better.

"Through the hatch, then?" he asked, and would have ducked in first if Thrawn hadn't grabbed him by the arm.

"No, Commander," Thrawn said. Eli frowned at him. "Allow me."

He summoned the stormtroopers, who entered alongside him, ducking below the tendrils. Eli swallowed, an unexpected blossom of fear flaming within his chest, and followed. His head was throbbing in pain; he must have hit it at some point—but when?

The bridge was recognizable, but barely, having been overtaken with tendrils so thick they looked more like vines or tentacles. Even the transparisteel viewscreen was coated with them. They curled around Eli's legs, and he hissed and batted them away, stomping on them until they scattered.

They seemed to like Eli in particular, which was—

_Everything is fine._

Not his voice. Not his thoughts.

His head hurt like hell, a surface pain that had become deeper as the seconds ticked by, as if something was— _burrowing_ , and Eli thought suddenly of the tendrils under the skin of the dead stormtrooper, and he knew.

"Lieutenant Commander?" Thrawn asked, and Eli realized he'd just been standing there, trying to fight the thing that was in his head. Just like the dead stormtrooper.

"Everything is fine," Eli said, his words sluggish as he tried to stop the _ras'can'tat_ from using his voice. The spores must have gotten through the plasteel somehow—or there was a rip in his suit—it didn't matter, he had to warn Thrawn. "Let's go."

The _ras'can'tat_ made him walk jerkily to a comms console and brush away the tendrils; it didn't have great control over the human body. Part of Eli's mind was flicking through the little botany he knew, thinking about parasitic fungi and insects and how quickly they killed their hosts. The rest was focused on Thrawn.

His fingers twitched as they ran over the comms console, randomly; the _ras'can'tat_ hadn't figured out how the delicate dance between muscles and nerves worked quite yet. And yes, that was something he could work with.

Eli concentrated, teeth gritted, and made his fingers flex in the hooked sign for _trouble_. And then, instead of struggling against the _ras'can'tat_ , he let go of his body and gave control over to it.

The _ras'can'tat_ wasn't prepared for him to stop fighting. Eli slumped to the ground, the _ras'can'tat_ struggling to fire the correct muscles to support his body, with his hand flopped to the side so Thrawn could see the sign.

"Eli!" Thrawn snapped over the private frequency, and darted to Eli's side faster than Eli could've expected. He shone his glow rod on Eli's face, and whatever he saw there made him go still.

 _Sorry_ , Eli mouthed, and then the _ras'can'tat_ was speaking.

"Look around you," it said in Cheunh, and even though Eli didn't know the language, he could somehow understand it. "Little Chiss warrior. When will your species learn?"

There was a cry from behind Thrawn and the spit of blaster fire, then an awful tearing and squelching sound. Eli tried to roll his eyes to see, but couldn't. Thrawn remained motionless, staring at Eli with a terrible expression on his face. There were, Eli realized, tendrils wrapped around Thrawn's torso, thick and weighty, holding him in place. His muscles bunched and relaxed as he struggled against it, but no luck. Instead, he began to talk.

"You are sapient," he said slowly.

"Perceptive," the _ras'can'tat_ said. It had a much better grasp of Cheunh than Basic, Eli thought dimly. It felt like parts of him were shutting down: the fear that had been fluttering in his chest gone, the anger, gone. He imagined the tendrils worming their way into his brain, taking over, and felt a deep unease, but nothing more. "Do tell me more; I do love it when you animals beg."

"If you are sapient, then you can bargain," Thrawn said calmly. "What will you accept in exchange for releasing him?"

There was a pause, then the _ras'can'tat_ was smiling with Eli's mouth, misjudging the stretch of his lips; Eli felt a spark of pain as the corners of his mouth split.

"It is your greatest weakness, you know," it said. "Affection. How many times have I seen animals beg for the lives of their loved ones?" It gestured towards a lump on the floor by the comms console, which Eli realized numbly was roughly in the shape of a human body. "That one begged."

"Her name was Shandi Maver," Thrawn said.

"It doesn't matter," it said dismissively. "You're only animals. Good for nothing but a source of food."

One of the techs was screaming. _Food_ , seven hells.

"So let us hear it, Chiss. Beg, if you want this one to live."

Still looking at Eli, Thrawn dropped to both knees.

"I beg of you," he said steadily, "free him."

"Is that the best you can do?" it asked.

Thrawn's eyes flicked to Eli and rested on his face, holding his gaze.

"I will do whatever you ask," he said, "for Eli."

 _For me?_ Eli thought, stunned, then several things happened at once:

Thrawn jerked hard and threw what Eli realized was a grenade into the mass of tendrils on the ceiling, then flung himself flat on the floor;

The _ras'can'tat_ screeched as the hatchway slammed shut on its tendrils as the stormtrooper and a tech made their escape;

The violence of the concussion grenade shattered the already-weak viewscreen, exposing the bridge to vacuum;

And the _ras'can'tat_ withdrew from Eli, sending waves of searing pain through his body as emotion and sensation rushed in where none had been, shrinking in on itself as if drying out under a hot sun.

He went EV as the vacuum of space pulled out everything inside that bridge that wasn't soldered down, and struggled to grab onto something with limbs still trying to remember how to function. Pieces of wriggling tendrils flew past him, and his wrist was caught by something—

Eli tried to shake it off, assuming it was a tendril, then looked down.

Thrawn was staring up at him, eyes blazing, his gloved hand hard around Eli's wrist as he clutched a piece of railing that still remained attached to the bridge.

He said Eli's name, just once, and pulled him home.

* * *

Decontamination was a real pain.

"Hair is a vector for all sorts of eggs and spores," the decon tech informed him, and shaved him bare, all over—which was, frankly, humiliating; at least no one else was there for it—before dunking him in a tank of antibac fluid.

"Take these," she said, shoving a bottle of tablets into his hand as he stood shivering and wet, skin burning from the fluid. "The antibac will knock out your immune system for a few days—this'll help support it while you get back on track."

"Understood," Eli said through clenched teeth. "Can I put my clothes back on now?"

Then a debriefing with a group of scientists and, weirdly, ISB, then back home, on the Chimaera, summoned to Thrawn's office the instant he returned.

(The corridors were— _strange_ , Eli thought as he walked, trailing one hand along the bulkheads. Fleshy, almost, the lights flickering almost imperceptibly as he walked. The sensation must have been a lingering aftereffect of the _ras'can'tat_ , not caught in decon. But he was definitely not going to go back and tell them.)

"High Command was satisfied with our results," Thrawn said the moment Eli walked into his office. "Their cargo was returned to them intact."

"But we lost the team," Eli exclaimed. "It wasn't exactly a win!"

"Collateral damage," Thrawn said, a thread of disapproval in his voice. "We achieved our goal, and that is all that matters."

"I guess." Eli slumped into the chair Thrawn kept for guests and ran his hand over his bald scalp. Thrawn's eyes tracked his hand, flickered down his body, thoughtful. "Did we ever find out what was so important to them? And how did you figure out how to defeat that thing, anyway?"

"The cargo remains unknown to me," Thrawn said with clear displeasure. (Shadows at the corners of Eli's eyes, flutters of motion like an insect's wings.) "But I _will_ find out. As for the _ras'can'tat_ , I merely realized that although it could survive in space, it did so in a state of hibernation, as some other spacefaring animals do—Weluki mollusks being one of them. Opening the bridge to vacuum seemed like the best option, but I needed time to prepare the grenade without it noticing. I am sorry," he added, "that I could not do it sooner."

Eli blinked at him. Did Thrawn just…apologize?

(Itching sensation in his throat. He suppressed the urge to cough. Something crunchy like eggshell in his teeth.)

"Does that answer your questions, Lieutenant Commander?" Thrawn asked him, all business again.

"I liked it better when you called me Eli," Eli muttered. "Yes, Commodore, it does."

When he looked up, Thrawn was smiling at him. A faint smile, nothing too exuberant, but still…a smile.

(Ignore it. Ignore it. _Everything is fine_.)

"Very well…Eli."

And Eli felt his lips crack as the _ras'can'tat_ smiled.


End file.
